Todai 30th in University Rankings...CalTech No.1...but No.1 in what?

What makes a good university?

This article in the Japan Times today shows that the rankings by a British magazine called Times Higher Education.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20111007a8.html

Todai is 30th. CalTech is No.1. Harvard and Stanford are No.2.

So...what does that mean?

Apparently the ranking is based on "their teaching and research capacities. The institutions were also judged on their international mix of staff and students, ability to transfer research into commercial gains, and research influence based on the number of citations."

I dug deeper, going to the Times Higher Education website, where they explain the weightings of the 5 areas of criteria:

• Teaching — the learning environment (worth 30 per cent of the overall ranking score)
• Research — volume, income and reputation (worth 30 per cent)
• Citations — research influence (worth 30 per cent)
• Industry income — innovation (worth 2.5 per cent)
• International outlook — staff, students and research (worth 7.5 per cent).

I'm curious about how they assess Teaching / the Learning Environment, but information on that is hard to find.

From an "undergraduate education" point of view, I'm concerned about their weight on Research/Citations/Industry Income, which adds up to 62.5% of the weight. Certainly it is important for students to be taught by professors who are active in their field and able to publish articles that get cited and get grants, but is it more important than the teaching side? For graduate students who are at a university to become researchers themselves, I can understand the importance. However, for undergrads who are not necessarily going to become academic researchers, and most of whom are going to go into professions that need a generally high level of intellectual and personal development such as the ability to understand, think, and communicate on issues...the learning environment is much more important.

So...I would think a separation of "universities for educating" and "research institutes" in the rankings would be beneficial. In Japan, I think a lot of research may be going on at Todai, but is the university really helping students develop intellectually and as a person?? I hope so, but from what I have heard, this may not exactly be the case.

What I really like about what we do here at ICU is that the focus is clearly on the development of our undergraduate students. Faculty do excellent research here, but a lot of effort goes into challenging and supporting each student on an individual basis.

More information is here.